The Futility of Catagorization of Elements

I have a clear memory back in middle school, in line to get lunch and pondering what my Homestuck classpect was after my then friend confidently said he was a Mage of Mind (I might be missremembering). I had a problem choosing becouse classpects prescribe narrative roles and living people are not stories, therefor by picking one I was choosing what story I was saying about myself. I don't think I ever settled conclusively settled the question, but did hover somewhere around Space of Void.

A different unrelated memory is that one time I was sitting around a campfire and infodumping about Magic the Gathering Colors to my Mom during which she cautioned me not to build my worldview around it, I don't now remember if I was old enough for this to be something to cringe at. I guess if I really felt like it, I could cringe at how during the covid years, when my sister would talk about impulsively cutting her hair, I responded with "Moth moment" then started explaining Cultist Simulator to her.

There is something nice in these sets of elements, each with thier own symbol, colors, meanings, and assigned damage type. One might feel like the know something about a family friend who really likes hiking by claiming they have strong Heart, or assigning more meaning to a thunder rumbling in the distance while the clouds are still preparing to rain, so the air is still dry and warm. However hiking is tiring and satisifying without any symbols and thunder is awe inspiring without imagining gods of ceaseless motion.

Like my Mom tactifully reminded me years ago, it's important to remember that these are sets of elements chosen for gameplay. MTG Colors are for grouping card mechanics first and representing worldviews second, Cultist Simulator Aspects are designed for engaging with imagined occult knowledge via the manipulation of resource tokens, and Homestuck is a story set in a world that functions by video game logic. Each of these systems is a model that seems to describe reality but is colored not only by the perspective of each author but by the creative project they designed it for.

You may wonder what point I'm meandering towards with all of this and how it's relevent to RPGs, and I don't know either. I don't know if I have anything intresting to say about catagorization that more articulate authors have not already said, just memories and impressions that have come to me. I certainly don't have much to say in the constraints of speedrun mode. The whole exercise feels somewhat futile.

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HELL ON WHEELS

Nobody knows where these cursed things come from. Metal carriages that roar like dragons and beltch noxious smoke. Ridden by orcs speaking a language that nobody knows, wearing strange clothes and wielding impossible weapons. Not even demons know what the fuck they are and where they come from. Their behaviour is clear enough however. These things rumble around, watch as us, shout incoherently and shoot if we get to close. They are forward scouts and we are not ready for the invading force.

INFERNAL CARRIAGE

HD 8 | DEF: As Plate+Shield | MRL: See Orcs | NA: 1 + 2d4 Orcs

• Five times the speed of a horse. Deals 4d6 damage to anything it runs over.
• Needs at least one orc at the helm to direct it's will.
• Make a morale check when you first hear it's roar.

ORC

HD 1 | DEF: As Leather | MRL: 8 | NA: See Infernal Carriage

• Carry horrible gonnes. They hit like a heavy weapon at the range of the bow, ignore armour and force a morale check the first time you hear thier thunder, even if your familiar with gonnes.

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d4 Awful Amulets

 An amulet is an object meant to protect you from evil. So generally speaking one invokes the powers of spirits noble and good to aid you. However some people manage to piss off everyone they could find or feel that thier power is not sufficent, or is otherwise desperate. In that case they might turn to one of these.

1. Sea's Offering: Made of wave-worn coral with gold ornamentation, signifies you as one already claimed to anything that would eat you. However you will be swallowed instantly if you fall in the water and it has no effect far enough inland that the ocean can not be seen. Throw it into the ocean to offend something very old.
2. Lacuna: Look away from it and you only remember that it fits in the palm of your hand. Things have a 1-in-6 chance to not notice it when they look upon it or it's wearer. You are not immune to this and should check if you forgot it somewhere each time you wake up. Swallow it to forget your name.
3. Vile Spoon: Despite having been thoroughly cleaned it still smells absolutely awful. Nobody will want to eat anything within scent range of this thing and you have -2 Reaction with everyone while holding it. Shoving it into a living being's mouth forces them to vomit on a failed CON save, preventing them from doing anything for d6 rounds.
4. Cradled Spark: When taken out of it's lead box, glows in pale blue light. All imbodied souls take 1 damage every day in it's presence, every disembodied soul takes 1 damage every combat round. Shatter it to teach the true name of fire to all within a 30' foot sphere. Those looking from the side are merely blinded and maybe a little singed.

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Lost Girl Session 1: Wake The Dead

I've started another campaign with my good friend Alice. This time the campaign consists of one system. Lost Girls by Wierd Writer. The only other system beyond the system I've spliced in so far is a win condition as prescribed by the the Bad Doctor. Alice's character Siouxsie will win the game if she dies knowing that there was someone who would have died to kill her and denies them the satisfaction.

Siouxsie woke up with dirt in her mouth, a pair pliers at her teeth and some twink straddling her. She’s a bit confused because the name ‘Siouxsie’ is all she remembers and he’s a bit surprised because corpses usually don’t move when you’re grave robbing them. While exchanging insults, the Siouxsie gets her lost girl accoutrements back and the twink invites the girl to join his gang. They seal the arrangement as is tradition, both put an unlit clove cigs in their mouth, roll it around and repeat with the other’s cigarette.

They then sneak out of the cemetery under the light of a bright moon. One that gives everything a blueish hue. Siouxsie is a pale and decomposing corpse, her ribcage is showing and part of her face has sloughed off. Her eyes are dark and sunken. She is a Dead Girl.  The twink leads her to a beaten up hearse, and offers her to pick some gear from his supply, he prides himself about being quite the tinkerer. He’s upset when she claims his body bag and absurdly large battle ready sledge hammer.

It’s late at night, the road is empty. There are flickering lamp posts and the sound of cars somewhere in the distance. Siouxsie finds a topic of conversation.

“So, what’s the gang’s name?”

“We’re The Banshees.”

“Since I’m Siouxsie, that’d make us Siouxsie and the Banshees. You know, like the band!”

The twink rolls his eyes, “Yeah whatever.”

“What’s your name by the way?”

He’s startled again, “Huh? It’s Elliot.”

“Okay, sissy.” Siouxsie responds to show she’s not getting too familiar with him.

They eventually arrive at the Banshee hideout, an old abandoned gas station. Where she meets the other two gang members in what once was a backroom. Serpentina is a Witch Granddaughter and considers herself the leader, because the other two want her. Her skillset centers around her charms and her curses. The next member is Robin, an almost orcish Smokeshow and Serpentina’s ex. Elliot is a part of this gang because Serpentina enjoys leading him on, he’s such a Messy Girl but can be very sneaky when he needs to be.

A week passes in relative ease. The new girl is found a fit of vandalized funeral garb to match her sisters. Elliot attempts to use Siouxsie as a shield against Robin with little success. Then it’s time for the three to introduce her to their patron.

They meet Annatrice the Crow Girl in a park that’s littered with trash. She’s enjoying a view of the pond. Annatrice does not hide that she knows Siouxsie, but the conversation moves on quickly. The mission is to recover a special knife from the murderer that has been terrorizing Cordwood Highschool. A high teaching establishment so bland and boring, that Cordwood Slasher is already the only thing anyone remembers about the place. Everyone already knows that all the victims are girls with brown hair, hazel eyes and their tongues cut out. Annatrice informs them about the name of the next victim, a girl named Millie will die in a couple days. She also warns that the Slasher will be difficult to take on in a direct fight, because “victims run, killers walk”.

After taking stock of the available resources. The gang decides to send Siouxsie and Elliot to break into the school at night, find out what they can about Millie from the office and use that to keep track down the killer. Everything goes according to plan, with the lockpicks and crowbar the Dead Girl stole from her boi-sister they quickly break into the office and let the Messy Girl get the information.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Steps echo outside the office. The empty school is filled with a tense silence, Siouxsie grips her hammer tighter, and waits. She needs to buy enough time for Elliot to find Millie’s documents. The silence drags on, whatever is standing behind the door is patient.

“Hey! Are you the Slasher? Give us the knife!”

The response reverberates in a deep leaden voice.

“NO.”

The Dead Girl decides to try to disarm the assailant, take the knife and make a break for it. She dashes out the door to see a huge 10 ft tall figure in a wet trenchcoat, face obscured in the dim light, except for a single bloodshot eye. Each hairy hand is large enough to wrap around her head like it was a tennis ball. A steak knife gleams in one of them, it looks almost comically small.

Siouxsie skids to a stop and looks up, starting to twirl her hair.

“Wow, do you have a number?~”

“NO.”

The moment stretches on, the Slasher looks into her eyes and sees that they are not hazel, so he is not interested. He takes two steps forward, pulls the sledgehammer out of her hand and throws it through a nearby wall.

“LEAVE.”

At which point Elliot decides he’s found enough, and the two lost girls make themselves scarce. The Cordwood Slasher motionlessly watches them run into the night. On the ride back home, Siouxsie thirsts over the giant and the annoyed Elliot suggests running her over. Siouxsie is receptive to the idea, much to the graverobber’s chagrin.

Smoke Kisses Sky - Session 5 and Post Mortem

Smoke Kisses Sky has come to an anticlimactic conclusion after around four sessions.

Session 5 started with Matilda and her loyal goon debating what if any oaths to they would make in front of the Sphinx of Black Quartz. After a long amoung of thought, the goon made an oath whose exact wording have been lost to time, and gained both the doppleganger curse and the service of the daemon known as Kosmos.

Then I proceeded to stare blankly into space, and failed to think of what to do next. After Alice suggested we do something else I agreed, then we didn't bring up the campaign for some amount of weeks. When we did get around to it, it was in agreement that neither of us was intrested in continuing to play it and agreement to try a different game sometime instead.

I blanked out on how to proceed after the Sphinx's oath becouse I had felt that I had massively fumbled the Sphinx in terms of pacing and delivery of information, and therefor turned off my brain so that I couldn't do anything else wrong. I am of course aware that this was an irrationally emotional response and that nothing terrible happened but that didn't stop me having a mental block in the moment. However I didn't get around to getting the campaign back on track later becouse I had already lost my motivation and fixated on other things to the detrement of this campaign.

I felt like I was stumbling through the campaign without any clear intent of if I was trying to play an OSR or storygame or even trad game style. I had thrown a bunch of ideas and mechanics I was excited for into the game but didn't figure out how to make them cohere into something I was confident with. Alas.

GLOG Crossover Multiverse Class: Every Orc

Sure, a sigilist can defeat countless orcs, but what about every one?

OMNIORC

Starting Skill: War, Forigner, Weight Lifting

Starting Equipment: Orc Axe, Orc Leathers, Big ol' pot of Orc Stew

A: Every-Orc

B: Double-Orc

C: +1 Attack

D: Platonic Descent

A: Every-Orc

You count as whatever possible orc* it would be advantagous to you, with all that entails.

B: Double-Orc

You count as any two possible orcs as it would be advantagous to you, with all that entails.

D: Platonic Decent

You count as every possible orc at all times, with all this entails.

*possible orcs include a tortured and corrupted elf, a fungus with a cockney accent, a fungus with a orchid on it's shield, a girl, a pig man, a mongol as described to a child by a racist, a soldier, a barbarian, a soldier, a barbarian, a soldier, a barbarian, a soldier, a barbarian, a soldier, a barbarian, a soldier,  mexican, a noble savage, a shaman in tune with nature, a caveman, a bio-weapon grown in mud, a goblin but bigger, a troll but smaller, a kind of undead, a half-devil, a genderless construct born from couldron, a conan, a social construct, a spiritual disease caused by industralization and facism, a ideal of masculinty (green), a lumpy grey thing, a monster someone stumbled into, a monster someone chose to be, a person, a kind of magic horse with a single horn, the dream of an incompetent solider, mindless vessel for enacting another's will, a creature defined by unbrindled rage, a race that needs to carry a lantern to see during the day, the decay of all things, beautiful nature spirits, Xenphon of Athens, literally bluebeing, slaves who recently overthrew their master, ethno-racial designator, things born of scrap-metal from the mud of battlefields, muscle mommy with tusks, a spork, vile shades, a facist cop, heavily armed redditors, or a barbarian. I think that's the complete list, please inform me if I missed any.

Smoke Kisses Sky - Session 4: Brewing Tensions and Journal Entries

At the end of the last session, the Father killed the Son in a duel to the death. Since then a couple days have passed as Matilda recovers, and the Mother has been giving the Father a cold shoulder. Which is impressive becouse she already has a very frigid disposition on a good day. Matilda overhears how the Mother speaks to the Glazier for advice on if she should prioritize her duties as a warrior or as a mother. The bandits at the Lily of the Water have silently started to form into two groups, around 10 of them are on the Mother's side while double that amount are with the Father. It's no surprise that she has less support, becouse the Father has always been the better chef of the two.

Meanwhile the collection of hunters that helped with taking down the Beast are starting to part ways. Rosemary is going to go upriver and over the mountains to the Great Wood where Moss is strongest. The poor unlucky woman does not want to be struck by lightning, so seeks the powers of Moss, becouse Glazier tells her that lightning is in the domain of Crystal. Bellum plans to get a safe distance away from Yelenin before the fighting starts while still operating in the Jabberwacky's marshes, since he's a local lad. Dame the Vivisector is going north to the Fallen City to slay dragons.

Matilda has the oppertunity to recruit one of them for a more permanant basis, and chooses the level headed and uncursed Bellum. He is willing to stick around despite the risk if Matilda has a good plan for ensuring that he's on the winning team, and Matilda comes up with the scheme of using her advanced knowledge of stew making to win over the bandits. The poacher is initially unsure but agrees to back her play. Matilda aligns herself with the Mother's camp through the comradery of the bandits she faught the Beast with, whose loyalty to the Son transformed to make the Father thier enemy. If the Father is taken out, Matilda has a chance to become the gang's new chef but she's going to have to deal with the Beast's slayer Scarlet and the Son's Wife, who are both skilled in the culinary arts. For Matilda to have a chance at the spot, she's going to need to collect reagants, that likely means hunting some dangerous magical beasts.

While politics are happening the background, she also decides to investigate the Sphinx of Black Quarts with a professional. The Glazier is able to find time in his busy schedule to venture to the previously explored cabin with the protection of the Apprentice and Matilda with her two companions. When they arrive, the craftsman-priest pays introduces himself politely to the unintrested oracle and looks at the statue. He translates the inscription to say “Swear on me, be judged and accept what you deserve” and explains that there is likely to be a specific phrase that is involved. By process of elimnation the answer must be in the cabin's final unexplored room, Distal's nest. However before getting to that, the old skeleton man admonishes Matilda and crew for not buring the bodies of Claricia and Inezch and directs them to correct thier error. During this process it's discovered that Inezch has wizard teeth, which are useful alchemical ingrediants that go unplundered, due to everyone's watchful gaze. Then the Glazier and Apprentice headed back to the villiage, becouse they have shit to do.

Meanwhile the party had to think about how to get inside Distal's nest without bothering the light senstive monster. The one time the oracle is known to leave that place is during the full moon, and after consulting the calander, it fortunately turned out that this very night it was the full moon. So the party just rested in the upstairs cabin until nightfall. During which time Matilda read Claricia's journal, learning more about how she died to her own poison, that her blood was cursed, how she tamed both Distal and Miette and her worries for both of them and her husband Inezch. 

Then when the full moon came, and the oracle wandered into the marsh, singing unharmoniously, the party snuck into his private chambers. The room consisted of chair, a couple chests, hanging paper stars and words written and carved on every surface. The phrase "Sphinx of Black Quartz Judge My Vow" was identified from common repetion, and the chests were opened with Inezch's key, where a crossbow for vampire hunting, silver bolts and several books were found. The books and bolts were looted and the party slept up in the cabin. That night Matilda saw a sphinx prowl into her dreams and give her a judging look that makes the Glazier's dissaproving tone look like approval.

In the morning she read Inezch's journal. In which she learned that Inezch became a divination wizard from vows to the Sphinx, that Distal stopped looking like him after Claricia tamed the oracle, and that Inezch was extermely paranoid about Claricia's safety. The session closes on Matilda pondering the mysteries presented before her and her next move.

Ease Of Running

This session was much easier to run then the last one, and I came away from it feeling way better. I think it's becouse there was a lot less uncertainty on if I was using the procedures correctly. The half consisted of me presenting information, and getting Alice to make choices and elaborating of what that entails. The second half was mostly exposition, with a focus toward answering the mystery of how to utilize the Sphinx of Black Quartz. 

Lunar Coincidence

I did not intend for Alice to arrive at the cabin at precisely on the day of the full moon. I quickly calculated how many days had passed in the campaign and it turned out to be two weeks. Which in the simplified calander I chose for this campaign, that meant that day had to either be the full moon or the new moon and I decided the former based on Feral Elf lore.

Kitsuragi Effect

A term I'm coining now. The Kitsuragi Effect is that when you give a PC a reasonable friend they are a lot less likely to do wierd shit due to the social pressure. Claricia's heart and Inezch's teeth have gone undefiled becouse I mentioned that npcs might judge Matilda for doing so. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing.